Seek Ye First

Y'all, I have to be honest: life has been ROUGH.

For the last few weeks, I've had just enough in me to survive. There has been no extra. No margin. My kids even called a family meeting like, “Ma, we need you to cook more.”

And honestly, that is the real side of ending a chapter and starting again.

It's not the nice hook, video, carousel or Instagram post we can add at the end. Sometimes it's bitter. Especially when the transition was forced. It's confusion. Anger. Anxiety. And as a single mother, it's also the requirement that I still fully show up for my boys while helping them, in their own young walks, understand that God is sovereign even when life does not make sense.

Starting over means there has to be a next.

And that brings a whole new set of questions.

What do I do next?
How do I know if it's the right move?
How do I know if I'm where I'm supposed to be?
How do I even get there?

Those have been my questions.

I'm still mourning what I lost, but my prayer has shifted to: Lord, what is it that You have for me? Am I even doing the right things?

How do you go from being a senior policy advisor helping shape global health and humanitarian policy to entrepreneur, content creator, community advocate and soon to be elected official?

Lord, make it make sense.

When I was impacted by the reduction in force, I didn't just lose my job. The industry I had spent years building my career in fundamentally changed. I applied for jobs I knew I was qualified for and couldn't get them. There were some very dark moments in that season.

Starting again does not mean I'm starting from nothing.

Eventually, I started taking the same skills I had used globally and pouring them into my own community.

I advocated. I served. I became deeply involved in issues affecting families in my community. Eventually, I was approached about running for the Board of Education. I put my hat in the ring, and now, running unopposed, I am preparing to become an elected official.

On paper, these things can look completely random.

But when I step back, I see something different.

I see God's hand.

Sometimes what feels like everything falling apart is actually God shifting things into alignment.

Growing up, they used to call me Lorraine Kutuku. In my dialect, kutuku means fighter or warrior.

And I have been fighting all my life.

As a little girl, sometimes I was fighting for myself and sometimes for somebody else. As I built my career, I fought for underrepresented communities and better health outcomes. Eventually that work took me around the world, fighting for equity, representation and resources for people experiencing humanitarian crises.

Different places. Different titles. Different seasons.

But the thread was always there.

Different places. Different titles. Different seasons. But the thread was always there.

That realization changed the question for me.

Maybe the question isn't simply, What am I supposed to do next?

Maybe it is, Lord, what have You already placed inside of me that You have been preparing for this next season?

God has been refining something in you long before you arrived at this particular crossroads.

So what captures your attention? What do you dream about? What burden can you not seem to shake? What are you passionate about? If you could spend your life helping solve one problem, serving one group of people or building one thing, what would it be?

And you might be saying, Girl, I don't know.

I understand.

Go to God.

The One who created you is the One who knows what He created you for.

But that requires something many of us struggle with: being still.

“Be still, and know that I am God.”

Sometimes we are asking God to tell us what to do while filling every quiet moment with something else. And please know, I am talking to myself as I write this.

Look at your screen time. Look at your schedule. Look at what consumes your attention.

Have you actually made room to hear Him?

Sometimes God speaks in a still, small voice. Sometimes He makes the vision plain. I don't know how He will choose to speak to you, but I know we cannot keep asking Him for direction while refusing to make room for His voice.

And maybe that is the lesson I am learning in this season.

I don't need the entire plan. I need the next obedient step.

“Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”

So today, that is what I am doing.

Seeking first.

Not the next title. Not the perfect plan. Not the version of my life that makes the most sense on paper.

God.

Ultimately, God's agenda is THE agenda. And each of us has been created to carry some piece of it.

I don't fully know what my piece looks like yet. Maybe you don't know yours either.

But we don't have to know the entire journey to take the right step today.

We don't have to know the entire journey to take the right step today.

My prayer for you, and for me, is that God makes the next step abundantly clear. That He reveals the passion He has already planted inside of you. That He gives you the courage to follow it, even when the path looks nothing like the one you planned.

Starting again isn't always about becoming somebody new.

Sometimes it is finally seeing the thread God has been weaving through you all along.

Seek Him first. Then take the next step.